As patients progress through medical treatment, it is often necessary for the patient to move from room to room in a medical treatment facility and from one patient support device to another. For example, a surgical patient may move between a pre-surgical preparation area, an operating room, a post operative recovery area, and a patient recovery room. The patient may be transferred between a gurney, a surgical table, a hospital bed, and a wheel chair. During all of this movement, the patient may be connected to various items of medical equipment that must move with the patient through the medical treatment facility. Typically, such equipment is attached to a mobile base that allows it to be wheeled along beside the patient.
Some shortcomings of mobile bases are that they can be unwieldy to push along with the patient transport device and they can tip over causing injuries and equipment damage. Prior attempts at addressing these shortcomings include providing mobile bases that couple to a patient transport and trail along behind the patient transport. U.S. Pat. No. 4,945,592 discloses a wheeled bed and a separate wheeled equipment base. The equipment stand includes a horizontally extending flange with a downwardly extending pin that engages a socket mounted to the bed. As the bed is moved, the equipment stand is pulled behind. To uncouple the equipment base from the bed, the bed is lowered until the socket and pin are disengaged. U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,285 discloses a similar device with a wheeled equipment base hitched to a patient bed.
Another shortcoming of mobile bases is that they take up space and can get in the way of personnel and other necessary equipment. Prior solutions to this shortcoming include providing equipment stands that can be selectively coupled to a patient transport and to a fixed support base in a patient treatment room. Fixed support bases can take the form of ceiling mounted service arms, floor mounted columns, and wall mounted headwalls. For example U.S. Pat. No. 7,065,812 discloses an equipment support that can be selectively mounted to an arm extending from a wall, on a column depending from the arm, on a wall mount, on a stand, or on a patient support. For example, the equipment support can be transferred from a free standing floor stand, to a rail on a patient bed, to a ceiling mounted arm. The equipment support includes a pair of parallel spikes extending downwardly from the bottom of the support to engage an upwardly opening socket mounted on each of the various bases. The equipment support is transferred by engaging a subsequent base with an unused one of the parallel spikes and then vertically displacing the support from the prior base. U.S. Pat. No. 5,527,125 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,306,109 disclose a similar mechanism except that the equipment support includes a pair of parallel, conical, vertical openings that engage conical spikes on the various bases. The spikes include grooves and the openings include spring loaded plates that lock into the grooves to secure the spikes in the openings. When only a single spike is engaged with one of the openings, it is locked in place by one of the spring loaded plates. When the parallel openings are simultaneously engaged by a spike in each opening, such as when the equipment support is in process of being transferred from one base to another, both spikes are unlocked. The presence or absence of a spike in an adjacent opening determines whether a spike is unlocked or locked. All of these solutions include horizontally spaced locking mechanisms.